


Breaking the Storm

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Second Age, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:28:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: Through ósanwe he spoke the rest of his sentence, searching for the thread of light that wasn't light and yet glowed and shimmered as he reached out for it. It was Them, their connection, the summation of their unique consciousness that defied any linguistic expression. It was into this stream that he spoke, so clear and yet so quiet as to seem like but a small ripple:"I could love you in infinitely numerous forms, for the light within you that I touch remains the same."***
Relationships: Annatar/Celebrimbor | Telperinquar, Celebrimbor | Telperinquar/Sauron | Mairon, Past Melkor/Sauron - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Breaking the Storm

Tyelpë closed the door to his chambers behind him with a soft _click_ as the brass caught and locked itself into place. He turns, not without a note of excitement, back towards his companion as he makes his way across the threshold and into the main aisle of the room, darkened save for the faint grey light cast from the curtains that twirl from the far wall. This late into the evening at this time of the year always seemed to be in a perpetual almost-storm in Eregion, and this day was no exception. Outside, the dewy warm winds from the sea merged with the cold breath of the Hithaeglir, setting the sky white with groaning cloud and the lower airs humid and cool in the frictious union of the higher spheres. Tuilë showers indeed, but the storm had yet to break. The air remained a battleground of the wills of the sky, and the dip in pressure made all around them crackle as if it could ignite with some ill-timed spark.

Despite the long shadows and the breathlessness of the spring's brewing storms, the bedroom itself gave Annatar pause: it had clearly been drastically reordered. Where once the dresser and a large chest had been kept in one corner was now the bed, and the dresser and chest where the bed once was were haphazardly shoved to the wall without care for the composition of the room or the anticlimactic centering of the large chandelier above... well, above nothing but the antique Laiquendi rug the bed had once rested on. And it all would have (still did, in fact, to a lesser extent), irked Annatar greatly had the grey light of the almost-storm outside glinted on one new and very _intriguing_ addition to the sleeping-chamber: a very large looking-glass. One not just as long as the bed itself, but mounted on the wall such that it was nearly level with the mattress.

"Needed a change, Tyelperinquar?" Annatar asked, allowing his amusement to colour his words.

Tyelpë shrugged, making to stand next to Annatar as he examined the new arrangement of the room. He smiled gently as Annatar glanced at him through the polished surface— such a smile as to give away nothing in expression.

"Why not?" he mused.

Annatar tilted his head to the side, a quirk that reminded the Lord of Eregion of a rather curious cat, though he quickly straightened his posture. The Maia, in truth, was immediately suspicious, as any of Tyelpë's spontaneous ideas should be met with: it wasn't often that he was cryptic or unreadable in such things, and the nature of Annatar's own concealment required he be on his guard.

"Am I to take part in yet another one of your experiments?" he asked lightly so as to be teasing, but Tyelpë noted the soft inhale that betrayed him.

He merely hummed in answer, anyhow, slowly making his way behind Annatar to embrace him where he stood centered in the bounds of the mirror under the nadir of the room's chandelier. His arms wound around the slender shape of his waist and brought him up closer towards where his heart betrayed the depth of his love, as if the nearness of Annatar brought upon him a more purposeful beat. The Maia did not yield into the touch, sinking as he usually would into the embrace like rose-petals in infused syrup— but neither was it that he pulled away. As ever, the Giver of Gifts retained his ambiguity, an intermediary between the gift-making and the gift-receiving. Tyelpë never could quite capture him in something definite, only in probabilities or in the fluctuations such as the weather outside which swirled and churned and ever-changed.

Not that it mattered: Annatar's moods were well known to him, even if he didn't fully grasp them yet. Back-lit by the soft light he ignored their image in the looking-glass and began to focus his attentions to the slip of skin uncovered by the neckline of the Maia's clothes, biting down in a gentle way and then narrowing his bite into something sharper. His hands began to work at the sash that kept the short tunic cinched in an alluring way to the shape of his body. He soothed his careful nibbles with the flick of his tongue as he tossed the fabric aside, sending the piercing argent of his eyes back to the molten half-cast of Annatar's own from where they connected in the mirror.

At first Tyelpë had considered that perhaps the Maia did not feel physical pleasure in quite the same fashion as one of the Eldar, or even as fully considering the nature of Ainur's making and incarnation. But he was now quite sure that Annatar merely did not _let_ himself partake too deeply beyond the mechanics of the act. He was sure of it, even, from the glimpses of unfiltered thought the Maia could not conceal on those nights he turned and twisted with night terror. So, Tyelpë would approach this as he would approach anything else he set his spirit to: with the determination afforded to him by his House, with the grace of skill, and with the firmness of will that could guide and form shapeless heat into tempered metal.

But Annatar could not understand the odd mood the elf-Lord was in, not in the careful, deliberate movement of his undressing or the change in their chambers. Lost in the sea of his turbulent thoughts of which every current he could not help but follow, Annatar merely laid back and let Tyelpë undress him, as if the other were at once the raft he'd fallen against and the winds that set the waves into motion. He was guided to the edge of the bed now, his chest bared and the remainder of his clothes gathered about his knees as Tyelpë worked on removing his slippers from each foot he pointed sensually, if only to provoke him. If anything, Tyelpë's movement became even more molasses; the addition of a careful sweetness. His eyes, now the colour of quicksilver, now the colour of the moon, brought a chill to the Maia's newly exposed skin just as the breeze that blew inwards from the small crack left in the open window.

He could very nearly see the cogs working within the Noldo's mind, but could quite grasp the intent of their placement. Just what was the elf's goal in all of this? The rearrangement of the room and the addition of the mirror was easy enough to parse— Melkor had claimed him many a time before a looking-glass even grander than this one, but something here was... different. Something settled a fire along his very awareness that was unlike to anything he'd before experienced. And it wasn't as if Tyelpë was wont to bed his partner in front of a mirror, something which required more vain sensibilities. So what—

"You think so vehemently, Anna," Tyelpë whispered against the satin of his inner thigh, echoing to his ear through his blood as much as through the static of the air. "It's almost as if you were whispering aloud."

Tyelpë was now kneeling at the side of the bed looking up at the Maia with a muted sort-of reverence, clearly in the know that Annatar had been thinking so intensely as to not realize the extent of his own undressing that had gone on. Tyelpë had, in fact, removed even his anklet and the rings on his fingers and he shuddered to have lost himself so fully. What had gotten into him? But Tyelpë merely continued on, leaning up to remove even his earrings before their gazes connected again like magnets clicking into place: Annatar's hair fell down in copper ringlets as their vision focused into something like a lens gathering their resolve into the comprehension of the other.

He is pushed back against the disturbed linen of the bed, watches as Tyelpë lets his own silk robe fall and sigh to heaps on the floor before he climbed onto the mattress after him, kissing any of the skin he could reach as he went and letting the very tips of his fingers brush against the hairs that, nearly-invisible, softened his body like the flesh of a peach. He tipped his head back into the awaiting cushion and let his hair fall about him like a halo, but he watched carefully the other's movements across his skin as if he could divine in them a pattern other than the joy of giving him such sensations that made the muscle jump with the torment of its brevity and his teeth to worry his lip with the difficulties of composure.

The wind outside picks up, the atmosphere shifting with the variance of the two fronts rising and falling, and the dew that builds palaces of clouds between them. Grey light still scatters the curtains to a semi-translucence, still falls upon them and lingers in the air the scent of ozone. But the storm had yet to begin and the coolness that was pinned under the high heat stirred the humidity heavy in the room, curling over their tangled bodies. Arda took a deep breath and held it, and all Her constituents waited for the dive.

The dark fall of Tyelpë's hair dipped between the part of Annatar's legs and the slip of shadow between them, farther down than the flushed marks he'd left on his thighs and calves. He held now one of his legs in his firm grip, kissing the jut of his ankle as he looked down at the Maia. Head still tipped back, his lips parted and self-bitten, his ribs pressing their bands across his chest with each heady inhale, and half-hardened despite the clear distraction of his thoughts. Tyelpë's theory was supported: in that the incarnate body responded just as his own would, but the racing mind of the Maia, the part given to him by The One, was incorrectly calibrated, as it were. He smiled.

"My Fairest," Tyelpë whispered, leaning so that he was pressed to a tender spot he'd cherished to bruising just moments before.

Through ósanwe he spoke the rest of his sentence, searching for the thread of light that wasn't light and yet glowed and shimmered as he reached out for it. It was _Them,_ their connection, the summation of their unique consciousness that defied any linguistic expression. It was into this stream that he spoke, so clear and yet so quiet as to seem like but a small ripple:

"I could love you in infinitely numerous forms, for the light within you that I touch remains the same."

Annatar gasped, and the alarm of the intimacy of Tyelpë's confession was like unto a roll of thunder through the hum of his awareness. He didn't dare answer but continued to lean back against the cushions, confusion overtaking his guard. Tyelpë did not let him answer, anyhow, moving quickly away to fetch the necessary oil. What remained was a Maia, reeling from the ripple of raw consciousness shared as if it were tsunami than a small lap of the tide, drowning in the concept of _light_ that came with Tyelpë's murmur. For in the speaking of one mind to the other there were no words, only images— and the light of Annatar that Tyelpë beheld and shared back at him, like a reflection and yet not the same, was a revelation:

He felt as though the light his Fëa produced had been made entirely physical, as if the photons themselves had swollen and grown to a fullness achievable only by matter. He was _perceived._

Surprise then, when the elf returned and still did not indicate anything further with his ósanwe or even the towards mirror: he just watched Annatar so gently but so searingly as he spread the oil across his slender fingers and made to prepare him for their joining. And Tyelpë was slow and careful in the motion of parting his legs, as if it were an honour; and the way he lifted him into a position that gave him access, the way he circled the boundary of his body before entering him was like a supplication. It was all much more attentive than need be, but not in a way that made Annatar feel like he was earthenware about to break. As terrible as it was, it was because of his malleability that Tyelpë went so unhurried, as if he was sure he _wouldn't_ break.

Annatar whimpered: nothing had warned him in his calculations that such a thing should take place or that he would let it. Tyelpë's graceful fingers worked into him, undoing him from the inside-out. Tyelpë was a pressure upon him, a nearly unbearable hot and hard force, but slow and steady, setting him to such madness as he couldn't understand. All of his will was bent upon Annatar— the sensation that echoed through to his bones, the light which he embraced with the unfolding merging of their thought, even the small puffs of his breath that fell against his skin. His eyes, silver-wrought and shining from within like blue fire, were both the burn and the balm to all of him. The darkness of the room falls away, and Annatar was adrift in the anticipation, in the relinquishment of control to the determined, delicate movements of his lover.

Oil-slicked and gentle, shifting his wrist to a kinder angle, Tyelpë adds the last finger within the clasping heat of the Maia, a swift and smooth movement at odds with the measured ones that came before it. His other hand he trails winding and orbit-like patterns along his hip, straying so often to his navel. Just so, the rocking movement of three fingers stretching him to an exquisite fullness, Annatar is overwhelmed with thought and sensation blurring into a continuum of presence he was no longer accustomed to: so he flings his arm across his own eyes and meets a punctual press of fingers with his own swiveling hips, only for the pressure within him to never arrive— Tyelpë's fingers have stilled.

"Please," Tyelpë whispers, reaching out with his free hand to pull the arm thrown over away from Annatar's eyes. His voice is raw, as if he hadn't spoken in years: "Don't hide from me."

He is falling, falling so suddenly that he grabs quickly back onto Tyelpë's hand to steady himself, and the calloused and familiar shape of that hand accepts him gladly into its unfolding warmth. Annatar lies there with his legs sweetly trembling and spread, the frayed ends of his confusion brushing back into his awareness. The pressure outside lowered further, the smell that drifted into the room just about full with rain, as if the humidity could fall from the sky and flood the valleys in the earth. But the storm is stubborn, and they were beholden to its whims.

And now it is that Tyelpë coaxes him to face the mirror, and they are back-lit by the swirling curtains and given just enough illumination to watch the way that Annatar slowly slips against Tyelpë's chest as he sinks down onto him, full and flushed where he is guided between Annatar's thighs. There is a dizziness between them, an intoxication perhaps from the pungency of the ozone and the dry gasp of the earth, needy for more and yet more rain. Still Annatar holds onto him, steadying himself for the lack of anything else but the smooth and cool surface of the mirror in front of them— and he can't help but watch the disappearing from his vision what simultaneously reappears in touch. He is breathless, his moans, and he looks up to search for the focus of Tyelpë own gaze, only: he hadn't been watching, his face tucked into the crook of his shoulder and neck.

He thrusts upwards into the Maia, his mouth and tongue working his nerves into knots as he claims him and yet doesn't watch their joining. _Why then the mirror?_ Annatar is baffled, caught between letting go and being unable to let go— and he's never felt this exposed before, as if the cloth of his flesh had been made intangible or as transparent as glass so the contents of his person could be seen. This coupling was nothing like what he had enjoyed with Melkor when before a mirror. This was bare and plain— his jewelry had been removed, the silks instead linen and the vanity of possession and the knowledge of possession replaced with...

_vulnerability._

Somewhere in the dip of Annatar's racing thoughts, he begins to grasp Tyelpë's intent slowly. But still he is missing the epiphany: that it wasn't so much their bodies as their bodies joining, as the emergent property— the _Them_ — that is made from the joining, and the trust that was integral to its stability.

Annatar wonders, in the midst of his not-quite-knowing, if some quality of his Fëa-light had changed in its birth under his skin to the surface of the mirror, where, transformed, it shone brilliantly naked into the depths of Tyelpë's knowing eyes. He wonders if there was some enchantment to the mirror-backing that made his reflection somehow more truthful to the Self than desired, if it was that his very thought and intent was captured within the glass. He curled away at that superstition, but still clutched to the elf he could not shy from their contact. But the shift was felt just as well as a barometer would the storm outside.

Golden threads of light glow faintly across the Maia, the barrier between his Fëa and flesh thinned into a veil— what remained of the substance of skin was blushed and hot like something warmed by the sun. Beads of light like building pearls string themselves along the paths of his nerves that branch and shimmer through him, and Tyelpë follows them like the Edain do prayers on a rosary, sucking on the flesh as they appear, tasteless luminesce, on his back and shoulders, then to the thrumming pulse in his neck. All-the-while are the languorous thrusts that shatter through him.

Then Tyelpë stops. He holds Annatar close to him, just as he did when they had first entered the room, but now resting his chin on his shoulder and carefully pulling from the Maia's enveloping heat. He cried out with the loss of him, with the _emptiness_ that settles upon him and his hair sparks until a shower of bright roses fall onto the linen, impossibly hot but without the mass to burn. His legs quiver and his nerves are alight with the desire for the transition state— he dribbles between his own tights and the hand Tyelpë keeps against his abdomen seems to sear right through his flesh as if it were butter.

"Do you wish to stop?" Tyelpë asks.

Their eyes cross in the mirror and Annatar lets out a hoarse moan so loud it could be a sob. But he isn't so frustrated as he is overwhelmed and terrified: he feels as if Tyelpë has pulled from from the mouth of the forge, bare and unformed and glowing hot with the desire for shape, as if he could see _him,_ not the light he bends to his intent but the emission spectra that betrays his true composition. _Do you wish to stop?_ wasn't meant to tease him, to frustrate him, but to give him an out. It was an opportunity to stitch his facade back up to the emissary of the Valar and continue on as if this slip of character had never happened. It would be safe. It was what he should do: but even so, Annatar answers him without thought.

"No, please!" And it is almost too pitiful for him to bear, this sound that came from him. But Tyelpë smiles and there is not haughtiness in his triumph, but a welcoming intimacy.

He guides him into a new position: he is now on his hands-and-knees sidelong to the mirror. Annatar braces himself against the relinquishment which was so different now from his willingness to be taken by him all the other times they'd touched before. This was an invitation as much as a challenge met between them, one neither could stop themselves from accepting and fulfilling with equal determination.

In such a position he can watch as Tyelpë enters him again from the mirror, can see the way he disappears behind the swell of his cheek and the curve of his thigh. The elf-Lord leans forward to follow the arch of Annatar's body until he is overtop of him, or until Annatar underlines him— until their weight and heat and the pressure of their skin is all electric, nearly too much. He thinks (or Tyelpë thinks, such is their shared thoughts), that the charge along their bodies would equalize, forming sparks of lightning between them even as the sky outside purrs with thunder. And the brand of Tyelpë inside of him, heavy and thick, sears him with a need for oblivion. Yet... he is just as slow and careful as before, and Annatar is unravelled with a downtempo akin to torture.

His skin shimmers again with the element that brands him: gold, gold as the flames that swirl in the center of Arda, gold as the sun in its zenith, gold as the look he sends breathless to the surface of the looking-glass as Tyelpë re-forms him and is reformed with him. Silver light bursts from Tyelpë himself, blurring with the grey of the light outside and the very tips of gold that seek him out. The barrier between Them is lost. They are one shape in the mirror, one source. A spectroscopic binary. Tyelpë has opened his every thought to him but Annatar is too overcome to pick them up with any purpose aside from the slow sink and swim and soar of what is immediately shared. So entangled, it is as if he is being penetrated and penetrating all at once.

His facade is lost. He finds he does not care. He finds that it is a relief.

Annatar's climax crashes over him without him really being aware that he had been pushed from the summit of his loftiest sensations into the deep-dive of his subconscious fulfillment, not until he is so barraged with the pleasure that he breaks apart at the seams of his chemical bonds and hurtles back to substance. Awareness comes only with the familiar form of his mouth to the syllables of Tyelpë's name that rolls off of his tongue like water and spreads through the air like wine in blood— and it is only the meeting of their eyes in the mirror that stays lingering on his retinas. Then his whole body is engulfed in flame like lightning, and the ozone from outside of Them combines with the scent of their joining just as the light that blurs into one.

In the flexing power of the air Annatar's hips stutter and he finishes spending himself in the linen with a drawn-out wail. Still Tyelpë continues to rock towards and away from him, but never leaving, steady and unyielding save for the minute falters at the spasm of his Fairest receiving him again and again, supremely sensitive after his own becoming. And though the Maia may not be lucid enough to recall, the ósanwe between them pleads and keens for Tyelpë's own acme until he too, tips and plummets.

Tyelpë glows with a different radiance than the gold of Annatar. He is a prism and a mirror and his own source all at once: he focuses and reflects and radiates a blue so placid and soft as to be the last colour of the rain as it falls or the impression of blue that the ocean leaves on the shore. Mind still open and raw and honest, Annatar can feel Tyelpë's own orgasm much as he would his own, but muted, and he sobs though the second shudder in the paradox of both spilling and being filled so fully with heat.

And they don't collapse after onto the sheets— Tyelpë doesn't let them, even with the drumming of their breaths in the aftermath, shaking to keep themselves steady and upright. It is only when Annatar's sight lingers to the way Tyelpë's hips cup against his own that they are removed, and the angle of it is in such a way that the Maia can comprehend how open and full he was with their joining— a mere glimpse— as he falls in Tyelpë's arms and is guided against the cushions. He is utterly vanquished.

_Dizzy, overwhelmed._ Annatar wants to flee and hide and stay still and yet all he can do is watch as Tyelpë leans down to kiss up his heaving chest, the pounding pulse of his neck and jaw, and the burning of his cheeks where tears still dew. He is undone and yet Tyelpë holds him still: the change in pressure writhes to stillness as the wind and the rain twirls and soaks the curtains and the smell of petrichor fills the dark room.

The storm has broke at last.

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably be edited more in the following days because I am posting this when I am really tired and can't trust myself to edit properly, I was just excited to post it :)  
> I hope you enjoy reading, and I hope you stay safe and have a wonderful day! <3  
> ***


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